I was once FruGal, Domestic Slack-arse.

These days, I do a lot of cooking. Imagine!

Ever since I first nervously ventured into the kitchen to crack open our beautiful, homely display of previously unused cookbooks about a year ago, I have gone from cooking about, oh, once a year, to pretty much every second night.  FruGuy no longer reigns as God of Cooking in our house. Although he still has a lot more natural talent for cooking (the show-off rarely uses a cookbook), I like to think that I am developing a sense of how flavours and textures work together and am relying less and less on recipes to serve up something not only edible, but very tasty!  Hail FruGal, Domestic Goddess.

I first began learning to cook for frugal reasons – mainly the hideous amount of money we were spending on eating out.  I also felt bad that FruGuy was the only one who cooked in our house.  Now I do it because I actually like it, and have become obsessed with knowing exactly what is in my food – especially the salt content.  So, not only is it frugal by saving money on eating-out, but it helps me stay healthy too.

If you’ve been watching Nigella Lawson orgasm over a chicken and mushroom pie lately, thinking ‘I could do that’, here’s a quick guide.

First, de-clutter your kitchen
As you know, I am a fiend for de-cluttering and purging at the moment, so of course I’m going to suggest this.  That aside, you really need to give your kitchen a good clean out in order to want to cook in there every day. If it’s a big jumbled mess and takes you half an hour to find a potato peeler, you won’t succeed.

1. Go through your cupboards and throw away anything broken or never-used that just take up space (the pop-corn maker your mother-in-law gave you three years ago (why?), Tupperware bowls with no lids, etc).  Make sure everything has its own place.
2. Create zones in your kitchen.  In these zones, put everything you need in the one spot for particular activities, so that you aren’t poking around in 6 different parts of the kitchen to make a piece of toast. Our kitchen has five zones: food storage (pantry, fridge, fruit-bowl), cleaning (sink, dishwasher, cleaning products under sink), breakfast (cereal cupboard, toaster, espresso maker, kettle), food prep (this is the biggest area – chopping boards, knives, crockery, utensils), and cooking (oven, stove, herbs, spices, cooking oils, pots & pans).
3. Organise your cupboards so that the most-often used things are easily accessible within the area that they are most used.
4. Try to avoid using the kitchen counter as a dumping space for your handbag, mail, keys, etc at the end of the day. If it looks like a bomb hit your kitchen as soon as you walk through the front door, you’ll be less inclined to want to cook in there. Your kitchen should be a happy, organised, welcoming place.

Tools of the trade
If you have ever picked up a Jamie Oliver cookbook in the bookstore only to leave it on the shelf, intimidated by the impossibly beautiful photographs of gorgeous rustic kitchens overflowing with expensive cookware, don’t fret.  There aren’t really that many tools you need in the kitchen (and even fewer gadgets), to be able to follow the majority of recipes.

1. Firstly, a good quality chopping board for preparing food, and one plastic chopping board for preparing raw meat.
2. Utensils: Other than knives, forks and spoons, you’ll need a good set of sharp knives with a sharpener, a can opener, a vegetable peeler, tongs, slotted spoon, spaghetti spoon, whisk, wooden spoon, soup ladle, one of those food turner slide thingos, measuring spoons (tsp, tblsp etc), measuring jug, garlic crusher, grater, and colander.
3. Crockery and pots & pans: (besides plates and bowls), a couple of good mixing bowls of varying sizes, a couple of ceramic cooking/serving dishes of varying sizes and shapes, a good set of saucepans and lids of varying sizes, a good large heavy-duty saucepan with lid for stews, a good extra-large heavy-duty saucepan with lid for soups.  I also have a three-tier steamer that I use almost every night for vegetables, but that’s only if you’ll use it.
4. Storage: A set of plastic food containers with matching lids for storing uncooked food and leftovers.
5. Gadgets: The only gadgets I ever use in the kitchen (besides the espresso machine), are a set of scales, blender and the George Foreman grill (turned out nice again). I don’t use a food processor because I don’t have one, but haven’t found an awful lot of recipes require it; but in an ideal world I would have one.

Getting down to business
When I first started cooking I was a nervous wreck in the kitchen. I would sweat over timings, my non-existent dicing skills, and basically everything else possible! After learning that the best tools to ensure a bearable time while preparing a meal are a glass of wine and some good music, I began to relax and enjoy it.

1. Always read the recipe through from start to finish before beginning. The amount of times we didn’t eat ‘till 9.30pm because I didn’t figure in the necessary cooking time…
2. Stick to quick and easy meals during the week and be more adventurous on the weekends.
3. Share the cooking around with your other half, housemates or others. If you are stuck doing it every single night you’ll end up hating it.
4. Make cooking part of the evening unwinding process. Catching up on your partner or family’s day while preparing dinner makes it more enjoyable.
5. Tidy as you go. This makes the cleaning up process much easier, and keeps the kitchen from looking like a bombsite.  Keeping the worktop as clear as possible will ensure a much more relaxed and happy cook.

There you have it. Nigella, eat your heart out.

Got any other tips?